George Wallace said:
You want to get serious? OK:
I'll take a stab at it. For the sake of the argument, I'm assuming that the current Reg-F standard will be the new standard.
George Wallace said:
A great majority of Primary Reservists join while they are in High School and continue on through university. That is a good eight years right there. They have three months on average, every summer, where they are looking for employment. Three months is enough time to get them through a Basic Crse in St Jean, and then OJT at their unit, Trades training the next summer, PLQ another summer, etc. They parade at their unit in the Fall, Winter and Spring, and do full-time training in the summers.
First off your 8 year figure is way off, let me explain it. It is closer to 5 (if they apply when they are 16 or 3 if they apply in university)
The vast majority of reservists I've talked to and worked with started in University (Sample sourced:from my unit, basic, SQ, units I've worked with 2011-2016) (I will admit that high school recruits do exist but are the minority). Reasons for joining in university ranged from: Wanted to max out cadets, Declined from RMC, never thought about it, needed a part time job. Another factor to consider in this debate is the amount of
time it takes to transfer from unit x/y. Attach posting from personal experience and talking with others who have attach posted is fairly short (3 months ish) the only one who I talked to about transferring took something like a year, which to me seems excessive, but it is definitely a factor to consider in this plan because the member lost a year of training as a result of the transfer (because the member moved cities to attend school). I'm not sure if this is normal or not so I'm not going to include this in my calculations.
Regardless let crunch numbers...
http://www.forces.ca/en/page/faq-220
To join the Forces, you must:
Primary Reserve applicants, who must be 16 years of age (while maintaining full-time student status) or older. So if we assume that
every applicant applies when they turn 16 and assume the Date of Birth for each applicant is evenly distributed (Which would mean that 50% of the applicants would be born before/after July allowing them to train that year assuming they could be processed in time and that units had spots.... For argument sake lets assume that
every recruit is ready to train (processed) by June 1st of their 17th birth year. This would be put every student at the end of their 3rd year of high school. While some students who be processed in grade 10 and others would could stay for a "Victory Lap" or 5th year, these people would be in the minority. This would give every student 16 weeks (between the summers of grade 11-12 and grade 12-university which
would be enough time to run a BMQ / SQ if you broke it into two mods. However anyone who applied in grade 12, or was RTU'ed for whatever reason would be in this weird limbo and not fully qualified, which would then screw up their schedule afterwards.
Assuming that every/most applicant goes to a 4 year university program (Which I would wager is the majority but it likely depends on the city). We now have
3 summers to train them.
Summer 1: DP 1 (Forgive me I don't know the length of every Army reg-F DP 1.0 but i'd wager this is fairly safe to assume that DP 1.0 as well as the end of summer exercise would occupy the bulk of the time)
Summer 2: DP 2* + Support courses I.E: (Driver wheel, Support weapons (infantry), Arty Comms (Arty), MSVS/Air Brakes, Engineers (I know they have some cool courses), Service Battalion (I don't have many close friends in these trades but what I was told from them is that "It takes forever to get trained" or "We will never be fully qualified")
Summer 3: PLQ
Summer 4: You've graduated! Hopefully applied to jobs in January so that you are working in your field or semi-related. If not Here is a CLS B position for RSS ;D
*Not entirely sure what the status on most trades for DP 2.0. I know with ACISS P-RES it is a joke 7 days DL + and assessment form your unit. However IMO it doesn't seem logical to do DP 2.0 the same summer as PLQ. I'm not sure if there would be enough work for every trade in this summer as I have no idea what the reg-f DP 2.0 standard is.
In summary I don't really don't think that there enough time to fully train reservists to the reg-f standard (
Assuming training times remain the same) even if they maxed out their summers. It can be done if they start when they are 17 but then they will graduate with no experience in their field of study, which in today's work force is a death trap. Just look at the entry level jobs that want you to have 1-2 years of experience with knowledge/skills that can only be obtained by doing the job beforehand.
George Wallace said:
??? There is no need to take off semesters. Students, as stated above, would parade as they currently do at their own units, and will have full-time (Class B) employment to do courses in the summer. Of course, they can pass up doing 'military' training and carry on with job placements that fill educational requirements or go on ED&T.
While I admit this that this more proactive statement as a opposed to reactive, I didn't want anyone to suggest it. WRT to work obligations/missing training. Fine you can, but at my university COOP started after during the summer between 2nd year and 3rd year and was then a constant cycle of school/work placement until you graduated which means if you didn't get trained in the first summer of university or transferred into the program of study (like me) then you only had one summer to muck around with the reserves. Which means that the reserves would loose good applicants because they can't balance the reserves + coop. Even if the member can't get into CO-OP at their university they should seriously look at other student employment opportunities whether it is with the local government, university itself or provincial or federal government as well as corporations.
While skipping training for a summer is an option (My friend did it) he kept on getting re-hired and could never get qualified in the reserves as a result and thus released.. I turned down PLQ myself for the same reason.
George Wallace said:
When it comes to military courses; well the Schools will just have to get off their butts and actually plan their Course Scheduling to accommodate the "New CAF".
Why? Why would they do this? When I inquired about CO-OP and I said "I'm not sure if i will be fully trained by the end of the summer with the army reserves can I miss the first work term?" "We don't accommodate for army reserves." "Sweet" . Not really much you can do their when you've already invested $14k to the university and transferring credits is a pain in the ass and sometimes impossible. CAF reservists are also a minority on campus some courses I took where only offered once a year (granted up year courses year 3/4, but I know the same thing applied to 2nd year courses for other students). Likewise some courses had a disproportionate amount of offerings in semester over the other. Without being mandated from the government they aren't going to do jack.
George Wallace said:
There are already programs in place: ROTP, RESO, UTPM, and on and on. Some would have to be amended to reflect the "New CAF" and some would likely be deleted. For instance, perhaps ROTP would be expanded to cover all officer candidates who are in a university program, no matter what unit they are members of.
While we could expand ROTP or create some sort of benefit package who is going to pay for it? We don't even have enough LSVW's let alone quality boots to do our jobs in the first place...
Let me be clear, I don't think a one year gap year between high school/university "mega" course is a bad idea I just don't think it should be
only the option. Likewise how do you retain these new soldiers? It is already a challenge to keep people after school as it is.
I also don't disagree with your pay system either, I'm just concerned about the proposed training system and that it might be slightly out of touch with the realities of the job market today.